Sound Board

Our thoughts and views on the practice of Intellectual Property in India and around the world.

The name Adidas is not new, and neither are its products. But in a major twist and what appears to be a blow, the European Court has ruled that the “three stripes” brand/trademark of Adidas was not distinctive enough.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the most significant pieces of legislation in any sector that has been enacted in recent years. Since its enforcement in May 2018, the GDPR has already seen a critical transformation in the way that various organizations store, handle, and process user data. We’ve provided an overview of the GDPR and some of its key features in an earlier post, which can be seen here. In this post, we’ll be examining some of the key…

There has been a lot of discussion about privacy (particularly online privacy)  over the last couple of years, most of which has coincided with the rise of social media, improved surveillance and monitoring techniques, and the use of user data as a commodity. Several industries have risen solely on the back of harvesting, selling, and trading user data in recent years. Advertisers now use user profiles compiled from aggregating search history, browsing habits, and media consumption to deliver…

Visual recording means “means the recording in any medium, by any method including the storing of it by any electronic means, of moving images or of the representations thereof, from which they can be perceived, reproduced or communicated by any method as defined under section 2(xxa) of the Act.

In a case of fraud, the High Court of Delhi has recently cracked down on unidentified persons who solicited money deposits in the garb of job interviews for a position in Colgate Palmolive Company. In two orders dated 12 April and 15 May, 2019, the High Court of Delhi has ordered an ex parte ad interim injunction against unnamed defendants, after Colgate Palmolive filed a suit.

As mentioned in our earlier article on the key features of the GDPR, one of the major changes brought in are the restrictions placed on exporting of personal data. Under the GDPR, personal data cannot be exported outside the European Economic Area unless the export jurisdiction has been certified by the European Commission to have appropriate data protection measures, or specific export mechanisms have been put in place.

Section 9 per se is not an easy provision to get through, laying down several criteria for determining if a trademark is entitled to be accepted. While Section 9(1) is the most common provision one can perceive in an examination report, Section 9(2) is a provision which leaves no stones unturned.

Justice Midha, in his order dated May 28, 2019, reiterated the mandatory nature of Section 25(3) of the Trademarks Act, 1999. As we have noted before, the Registrar is obligated to send a notice regarding the expiry of validity of a mark to its proprietor, before the said expiry.

The three WIPO Agreements have received accession from the Indian Government.[1]The three Agreements were introduced through the WIPO treaties primarily to ease the search for trademarks and industrial designs. In this arena it is significant to understand the prominence of all the three Agreements. A brief understanding of all the three Agreements are as follows:

When the use of the hashtag trademark suggests any sort of connection or link with the trademark owner or creates a likelihood or association with the trademark owner, then there maybe be grounds for infringement